


The Browncoat Ball, Fanish Shindig, and Pop Culture Hootananny

by fresne



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Gen, Last Stand of the California Browncoats, SDCC, San Diego Comic-Con, Yuletide 2012, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Rising, the annual Browncoat Ball was held in August.</p><p>After the dead rose, there were no more gatherings. There were no more balls.</p><p>But fans, they find a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Browncoat Ball, Fanish Shindig, and Pop Culture Hootananny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [endquestionmark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/gifts).



> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> BtVS - Dead Man's Party

2014  
Before Rising, the annual Browncoat Ball was held in August.

After the dead rose, there were no more gatherings. There were no more balls.

For three years.

July 19, 2017  
The first Browncoat Ball was informally - if that word could be used for that occasion - held on the bombed out remains of the San Diego convention center.

The ball consisted of one Zoe holding a sawed off shotgun, a Captain Tight Pants, an incredibly brave - or foolish - Kaylee in a Shindig dress, and a portable player.

They danced two dances. The first was Danse Macabre. Whoever Captain Tightpants and Kaylee were, they knew how to dance. They did things with their arms. They spun until the world saw that ridiculous layer cake of a Kaylee dress fly. They did the fancy steps.

The second dance was to the theme song from Firefly. Both of the dancers were crying as they spun.

They danced on the site of the last stand of the California Browncoats.

They filmed the whole thing live streaming posted to JossIsBoss.com, a fansite that only still ran because the server room had been more secure than the coffee house where Malgurl999 had been getting her afternoon caffeine hit when the dead rose. There were millions of those kinds of sites. Content frozen. Ongoing litigation over whether or not the sites should be kept in memorial or quietly left to fade away.

The only reason that server room didn't crash by noon that day was fansites mirrored around the world to spread the word. The Browncoat ball had been held again.

~~~~~  
August 2017  
Mayor Minert Ortiz of San Diego held a press conference. Blah, blah, San Diego Comic Con, Horrible tragedy, blah, blah, dangerous materials at the site of the tragedy, blah, blah, don't try this at home kids. As if there were still anything like liability laws to worry about.

It became a thing. A meme on every fan board that fan boarded. Where the next Browncoat ball should be held.

Opposing that was that a multitude of laws making flash mobs a misdemeanor. Fortunately, the one that would have had it counting toward California's three strikes law did not pass. But sixty separate fans were fined.

Then there was the epic thread on Whedonesque - "Blog the Ball" posted by CeruleanSky. "What I don't get is why everyone is being so God Damned LITERAL about this? We don't have to meet to have a ball. A couple geeks here. A few minions there. A little brie. A little dip. Some webcams. A Sharespace and we're golden."

Since this was the internet, it required a discussion that broke the internet to work it out.

SheHulksAlot wanted to know what system they were going to use, "because they couldn't use a Nazi fascist system to share a Browncoat Ball. It should be hosted by a fansite."

Castiglione called, "Godwin's Law!"

AstoriaWinter started a subthread on whether or not this actually counted as an infraction of Godwin's Law because no specific group or individual had been referred to as a Nazi Fascist.

There was a sub-sub thread started by EatsShootsAndLeaves as to whether or not it was redundant to call someone a Nazi Fascist.

Everything came to a sudden and abrupt halt when SandraDazed posted, "Next Year at Comic-Con - Enough bullshit, I'll buy the server farm myself if it means we can get SDCC back! Now where's my streaming Joss in a flying car?"

What happened was complete and utter chaos.

SandraDazed, ArithmeticBlues, and YachtedInSpace found an old server rack on the old UCSC campus - best not to ask how that happened - and posted that the next Browncoat Ball was going to occur on the third weekend of July, on the 21st to allow users to access on Saturday, rather than on the 18th - the anniversary of the Wednesday when the bombs fell. Some code was cobbled together to support multiple video chat sessions. The first streamed song would be "It's Christmas at Ground Zero."

July 21, 2018  
Needless to say the site managed to stay up for three minutes before the site, which as Count0 put it, "was built with stone knives and bear skin," collapsed.

It was an enormous success.

BlueMaize posted, "Absofreaking blast. Okay, so the site didn't work, but we after we opened up a daisy chained chat on Duotrigintillion.com, it got freaky. In a good way."

~~~~~

July 18, 2019  
They added panels starting on July 18, Thursday. If the fans couldn't congregate, then they would Avatar congregate. As Iamlegend put it on the Dreamwidth Community for Zombieland, "Zombies may eat my brains, but I still want to meta about the things I care about."

Fans could register an idea in March. In April, the interwebs booted ideas that didn't fit in. There were numerous cries of foul and this did result in a splinter group that agreed to hold a con when New York Comic Con would have met. In May, there was a month long poll to determine overall interest. June was the scramble to find moderators.

On July 18, fandom had its con panels.

Some entries from various tracks included:  
Movie track: "Blade Runner - Building the future: Where are my Damn Flying Cars?"  
Novel Track: "Reconsidering Frankenstein in a Post Rising World"  
Education Track: "Red Planets and Marxism"  
Fandom Track: "Cosplay in an Avatar World"

~~~~~  
July 15, 2020  
Now officially the "The Browncoat Ball, Fanish Shindig, and Pop Culture Hootananny", BBFSPCH - Shindig for short - got its first celebrity guest. Eric Qual, the sole cast member from "Space Crime Continuum" not to be at Preview Night, agreed to give a talk about his former castmates.

The interchats went ballistic with squee. Then they trashed the idea.

Misha Collins from "Supernatural", "Jauarana", a Sci Fi original movie, agreed to host a panel on Existentialist Tibetans if he could plug his plans for post zombie world domination. Squee returned to the interwebs. Paul and Storm arranged a streaming concert to coincide with the second day of programming. Zachary Levi from from Chuck agreed to host a "Spies that We Love" panel with quick link donations for charity.

Someone created a line meme for fans to wait in while they waited to get into their favorite panel. The graphics were pretty fantastic. Every now and then, a freaking zombie would shamble up to the fans sleeping in line. Users playing as a group would have the option to return fire with some violence, lots of violence or extreme violence with a variety of unlikely weapons, or a "Game Over Man" sign flashed across the player's monitor. That was it. No one wanted to program people dying. Just game over then.

~~~~~

July 15, 2043  
Buffington posted, "This year in San Diego, I've decided to fly over San Diego in a zeppelin. There's room for one hundred in the main compartment. Anyone turns, we dump them. Who's with me?"

Which is the first time that the week long all fandom celebration in July culminated in a dirigible race over the San Diego harbor. All the colors of the rainbow, and that last one was a Death Star.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
